


Death Wish

by UbiquitousMixie



Category: The Closer
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:56:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UbiquitousMixie/pseuds/UbiquitousMixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brenda Leigh Johnson doesn’t have a death wish—or at least she never thought she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Wish

Brenda Leigh Johnson doesn’t have a death wish—or at least she never thought she did. 

That was before she found herself facing the barrel of a gun, the safety removed, the smell of sweaty desperation thick in the air. If this were a cartoon, and surely her life certainly feels like it at times, the gun would actually be smoking. 

From where she’s standing, she can see her suspect’s trigger finger twitch. It would take one little pull, one subtle shift of a muscle, and she would have a bullet in her head. 

It’s not the first time she’s been in this position; she’s cheated death before, and maybe she will again. But there’s a sense of—not _calm_ , because there’s too much shouting for that—clarity. She’s just a woman right now. She’s a deputy chief, certainly, but everything else has just faded away. She’s not Mrs. Howard and she’s not Sharon Raydor’s lover and she’s not a scared, confused home wrecker with a penchant for avoiding her problems. 

She’s simply stripped bare: a woman who may be shot by an officer who killed his family. It’s almost laughable how little she feels. For the first time in days, she’s not being consumed by guilt or jealousy or frustration. It’s all gone, evaporated from her like steam off the midday asphalt in Atlanta. On this fine wire, caught in a transient moment of chance between life and death, she feels surprisingly cleansed. 

Brenda chokes back a breathless laugh, if only to prevent herself from provoking her assailant into pulling the trigger. Has her life always been this funny, this absurd? She wonders if, on some larger cosmic scale of reasoning and fate and destiny, if she was always meant to end up right here on this roof with this man with this bullet aimed at her skull. 

She won’t die. Her backup will arrive. It occurs to her that it can’t end this way, because she hasn’t even told Sharon that she loves her yet and her husband’s anniversary present is still in her trunk. She hasn’t apologized to her daddy for lying to him and she hasn’t told her mama that she’s sorry for allowing herself to go so horribly astray. 

But if it did end, right at this moment, would it be so bad? Would it be so terrible to no longer feel the weight of adultery and the burden of disappointment on her shoulders? 

It’s Raydor who takes the final shot, in the end—Raydor who saves the day, who shakes Brenda’s shoulders so hard that the deputy chief has to blink and remember that she’s still alive. Brown eyes focus hazily on Sharon’s service weapon and then on the body, observing the tableau as if she’s not a part of it. It’s not until the acrid scent of gunpowder fills her nostrils that she’s _there_ , grounded in the startling reality of it all.

The bile rises in her throat and tears sting her eyes, and she allows Sharon to pull her tightly into her arms in front of her team, her husband. 

She did have a death wish. 

She can’t ignore her life anymore. 

\---


End file.
